Wednesday, June 01, 2011

The Shabby Dominance of Islam at the Omerie Mosque

Henrik Ræder Clausen recently visited Cyprus, where one of his stops was the Omerie Mosque. He was disturbed by conditions at this historic building, and was moved to write a letter to the editors of several periodicals.

As of this posting, no publication deigned to publish the letter. The text of Henrik’s account, accompanied by the photos he took, is below.


Omerie Mosque: The church

Who is responsible for the Omerie Mosque?

On a recent visit to Cyprus, I had the opportunity to visit the Omerie Mosque, previously the Church of the Holy Maria. What I saw was disturbing, and I think it deserves to be addressed.

First I noticed a poster requesting Muslims not to eat a particular brand of yoghurt, for it contains gelatin, which again is based on pork. It is a detail, but a clear one. The organization behind the mosque are requesting the Muslims to adhere to Sharia law, to let ancient religious rules dictate details of their everyday behaviour.

Omerie Mosque: Sharia commandment

The fact that such detailed regulation of everyday life is totalitarian is of lesser concern. What matters here is that Sharia is a system supposedly given by Allah, and in contrast to modern law in Western countries cannot be changed by humans. In other Western countries, like United Kingdom and my own country Denmark, we have problems with creeping implementation of Sharia law, as opposed to secular, democratic law. Sharia comes in details like this, which we need to be aware of.

A plaque on the wall announces that the mosque is operated by the International Islamic Call Society, the Great Jamaheriya.

Omerie Mosque: Run by Libyans

It is worth quoting from their mission statements, which can be found here:
WICS is interested in bridging the gaps among peoples of different religions and bringing them closer by promoting Islamic dominance. One of the main focuses of the Society is to promote a version of Islam opposed to pluralism / interfaith co-existence.

Libyan Leader Colonel Gaddafi, funder and founder of WICS, has stated on record, “This religion shall overcome all other religions before it. Their time has gone. It is his promise. Allah shall prevail this religion over the rest.

This would be what the Omerie Mosque is intended to promote. I am puzzled that they are permitted to use an ancient and historical church building for furthering this agenda.

As for the church building itself, it is clearly in need of maintenance and repair. Weeds growing in the roofs and even small trees finding cracks in the walls makes it clear that to avoid structural damage, quite some work is needed soon. Our guide, however, told us that the organization behind the mosque stubbornly refuses to let the Antiquities Department commence repairs.

Omerie Mosque: The unkempt garden

A tour of the garden yields another surprise: It is entirely unkempt, littered, and is even used as a garbage dump for broken furniture, clothes and broken air-condition systems.

Omerie Mosque: Garbage

Do the people using this historical building have absolutely no reverence for the property they are generously permitted to use?

Omerie Mosque: Cleaning before prayer

They request believers to wash themselves before prayer, but make no attempt to keep even the small garden somewhat in order. In contrast with, for example, the Hala Sulta Tekke mosque in Larnaca.

I believe some conditions can and should be placed upon the organization operating the mosque, in order that they might keep their permission to use a building of such historical value. This would include for example:

  • At their own expense and effort keep the garden and the surroundings around the building in order.
  • To permit the Antiquities Department to perform any and all structural maintenance needed.
  • To sign a suitable declaration that they reject Islamic supremacy, respect secular law, are opposed to religious racism, and accept equal rights of women. One such declaration is the Proposed Charter for Muslim Understanding, authored by the Islamic Scholar Sam Solomon.

Handling interfaith relations is no trivial matter, and should be approached with tact and mutual respect. Making reasonable demands on every party to the relations is an important building stone for mutual understanding and peaceful interfaith coexistence. There is no good reason that the International Islamic Call Society should not be faced with reasonable requests for clarifications and conditions for their continued use of public buildings.

Best regards,

Henrik Ræder Clausen
Danish Society for Culture and Constitution

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is interesting that they translate the sign into English but leave the word "Jamaheriya" only transliterated as if the word is too hard. I would guess "assembly" is close enough.

goethechosemercy said...

The Great "whatever it is" is obviously not much into stewardship!
And as for "alcohol" in certain biscuits.
Every type of bread baked with yeast should be forbidden to Muslims since one of the by-products of yeast fermentation is ALCOHOL!
And even though the alcohol is evaporated (for the most part) when the bread comes out of the oven, trace amounts of it could remain and pollute the delicate Muslim soul.

Blogger said...

>To sign a suitable declaration

They will sign it but they are allowed to break promises and engage in deception, so this is pointless. Only publically exposing and deconstructing Islam will be helpful.

Anonymous said...

I'm not greatly concerned by warnings to the faithful at a place of worship about forbidden foodstuffs--as long as that's all they are. After all, I wouldn't be offended if I saw a notice in a synagogue reminding the faithful that pork gelatin was found in otherwise innocuous looking manufactured foods. If the Muslims practised halal the way the Jews keep kashrut, it wouldn't worry me at all. I'm more concerned that I don't seem to be able to get yoghurt in my country that isn't halal.

Hesperado said...

I second Salome above (but see my concluding PS).

I don't care if a groupuscule within society (whether it be a religion, a cult, a non-religious organization, etc.) has silly rules about what to eat and what not to eat, what kinds of shampoo to use, how to enter bathrooms properly and how to urinate and defecate correctly -- so long as they don't have a disturbingly frequent and global habit of committing violence based upon the same laws whence those silly rules derive.

This whole fixation by the CJ ("Counter-Jihad" -- or "AIM" as I'd rather call it: "Anti-Islam Movement") on Sharia Law is far too often curiously detached from the blueprint of violence in Sharia Law as well as the psychocultural wiring for violence in Muslims and Muslim society through their variegated pedagogy based in the Koran, Hadiths, Tafsirs, Sira and Fiqh -- all disseminated and inculcated in a variety of ways: in cafes and tobacco shops (and other focal points for socializing); through family upbringing; in gatherings in the homes of fellow Muslims; from street corner harangues; from mosque sermons; from mosque gatherings before, during and after the sermons; from meetings at the gatherings of the jungle of groups and associations (among which are innumerable jihadist organizations) that are rife throughout the Muslim world and the West; from TV shows; from radio shows; from cassette tapes and CDs and DVDs; and lastly from the Internet.

Salome adds:

"I'm more concerned that I don't seem to be able to get yoghurt in my country that isn't halal."

That would certainly be a concern -- but a minor one, fairly easily adjustable, as long as the group involved did not also commit violence nor ever threaten to do so.

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't mind eating halal if it didn't mean that I'd had to pay stealth jizya to get it.

Ray Boyd said...

"Cyprus was raped by Turkey in 1974 and that dumb ass Henry Kissinger gave Turkey the green light to invade Cyprus. Kissinger told the junta in Ankara that the US would not intervene if Turkey invaded. Turkey did. Today, the northern part of Cyprus that Turkey holds is a mess. The Cypriot Turks who lived there for generations along with Greek Cypriots are treated like garbage by the Turks who moved there. In the Turkish controlled side, churches and what few synagogues on the Turkish side have been looted and holy things have been sold on the black market"
Source: Centurean2.wordpress.com

It's Turkish Muslim so it's to be expected that sharia will eventually be imposed.

As per our previous disagreement re Cyprus at least the Christian Greeks don't have to live with the muslims amongst them now. Not than any other culture CAN live peaceably once muslims are in their midst and making their demands.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Ray, this mosque doesn't have much to do with the Turkish problem in Cyprus. These people are Libyans, and most of the people attending this mosque are North Africans. Turks are not directly involved.

Salome wrote:
I'm more concerned that I don't seem to be able to get yoghurt in my country that isn't halal.

And if we don't stop that trend dead in its tracks, we shall soon not be able to find anything not Sharia-compliant...

Blogger wrote:
They will sign it but they are allowed to break promises and engage in deception, so this is pointless.

Do you know this, or are you guessing?

To the best of my knowledge, not one single Islamic organization or individual has signed the Charter. This is interesting, for if one goes through it, there is nothing in there that a modern, moderate and Constitution-respecting Muslim should object to.

Also if Islamic orgs were to sign, then proceed to ignore the contents, it would be too clear and obvious deception - it wouldn't work.

I encourage requesting such signatures from Islamic orgs, then making a fuzz in the press when they refuse.

Henrik R Clausen said...

Ray wrote:
at least the Christian Greeks don't have to live with the muslims amongst them now.

Sorry, I have bad news: This mosque is located in the free part of Nicosia, not the Turkish part :(

Hesperado said...

Salome added:

I wouldn't mind eating halal if it didn't mean that I'd had to pay stealth jizya to get it.

And Henrik R Clausen seconded her previous comment -- "I'm more concerned that I don't seem to be able to get yoghurt in my country that isn't halal" -- by drawing the conclusion that may or may not (without a qualification, it's hard to tell which) entail a flawed premise:

And if we don't stop that trend dead in its tracks, we shall soon not be able to find anything not Sharia-compliant...

Again, if Muslims were not committing violence and threatening to commit violence, this would be a relatively minor problem, and the notion that it would inexorably entail our domination by their laws would be remote, even laughable.

The stealth jizya which concerns Salome is intimately and indissolubly connected to the violence which Muslims continue to commit, threaten to commit, and which is wired into their culture and psychology formed (or deformed) by that culture.

To curiously detach the problem of encroaching Sharia from Islamic violence would be sort of like regularly complaining about the way that certain Sicilians in a New Jersey neighborhood are horning in on all the businesses -- without ever mentioning that the main way those Sicilians are able to do that is through intimidating shopkeepers and small business owners through various means of brutal violence: beating up a barber who resists their requests for a 50% cut of his earnings to a pulp so that he can't walk anymore; cutting off the hand of the local union rep who similarly resists their demands and mailing it to his wife; gouging out the eyes of the corner grocer who won't allow one oftheir nephews to buy out his store; and so forth. The extortion money gained by such Mafia mobs is directly related to the violent intimidation they use. Islamic Jizya is the same.

If, on the other hand, a group of, let us say, peaceful Maltese moved into a neighborhood and went around making demands, but never once did any violence and never once threatened to do same (and had no culture or history of ever committing violence), people would just ignore them, or schedule town meetings to discuss their demands and decide by vote whether to yield to any, all, or none of them.

Our real Western problem with Muslims is a fusion of two factors:

1) actual horrific violence committed by Muslims + a constant climate of threats and intimidation to do violence (which gains great weight by the successful violence they regularly commit)

2) their privileged status of favoritism conferred upon them because of their perceived ethnicity by our dominant and mainstream PC MC culture.

Without #1, #2 would certainly be a problem, but one which would work itself out over time without the added element of existential deadliness which imbues the Muslim problem.